What is "prison"? According to the American Heritage Dictionary it is: "a place of confinement for persons convicted or accused of crimes." The same dictionary defines "prisoner" as: "a person deprived of freedom of action or expression."
Any logical, thinking person knows that people who are "convicted or accused of crimes" are not the only people who are "deprived of action or expression." And any person who reads the newspaper or watches the news knows that even innocent people are deprived of those rights; through kidnappings, hostage situations, and, most dangerously, psychological torture.
That's the real "prison" we have to be afraid of "being in"; the one which is in the mind, the one that is "built" by prejudices, and any other psychological disorders.
There are millions (maybe more) of people in the world who've been stagnated in their educational growth, not to mention the rest of the progressive traits that take an effort to get, just because of the notion that we aren't made to be perfect. Ever since young children were told that we're not made to be perfect. This is taught to us by school teachers whenever we're taking a failing grade too hard. This is taught to us through the majority of the "religions" which surround us in everyday life. This is even taught by our own parents, who mean well but unknowingly are creating an unnecessary pessimistic attitude towards our own abilities. Okay, so you believe we ain't perfect, that's expected, but you don't have to repeat it so much that your children begin to believe that their hopes in reaching that perfection, or better yet, higher-thought, is worthless.
Another way we are imprisoned is by our early "teaching" (through action) that we're inferior to others because we're "different". As children in school we are beat up/bullied by other children for having more lunch money, not having any lunch money, our transportation from school, the clothes we wear, for being too dumb and even for being too smart. (Alot of these examples can be applied to different times in a person's life, but I'm concentrating on school and childhood because that's usually the first community preparation phase.) Anyone who went to school, whether it be for 2 weeks or until a degree was achieved, knows that these taunts caused alot of children to drop out of school or get kicked out just to avoid being considered "nerds" or "teacher's pets."
An even more popular psychological disorder indoctrinated in us is racism. How many of you have been denied entry into an establishment, a job or neighbor's home just because of your ethnic background or the color of your skin? How many of you have had bottles thrown at you, eggs, stones or even had friends/relatives who were murdered for those same reasons?
But, here I won't look at the physical hurt caused by racism, here I'll concentrate on the mental one. When you were a child and were called "nigger", "spic", "honkey", "goya bean", "coon" or "blue-eyed devil" (and many more which I haven't enough room for). The first thought(s) you had included something like "the whole world is against me", so what, I don't care what they think cause we're all equal anyway. But, yet, that is the truth; we're all equal.
Does it really matter if you are black, white, yellow or green? Don't we all have to eat to prevent dying from starvation; drink liquids to avoid drying up and have blood running through our veins? If we do, which I'm sure we all agree we do, why must we use these contemptuous labels towards each other? Why must we keep hating each other for these reasons? Because we haven't gotten to the base of the problem, we have to find out who taught us these things and stop them.
So who do you think is the culprit? I don't think we have to look far; just look in the mirror!
You say to yourself, "wait a minute! I'm not racist, I don't down no one for being smarter than me or tell them they aren't perfect." But the truth of the matter is that if you see it happening and don't do anything to stop it, you're "guilty" too! What people fail to see and understand is that we won't be "freed" from this psychological imprisonment until we all, people as a body (black, white, yellow, African, American, Puerto Rican, Columbian, Chinese, etc) open our eyes and really "see" what's going on and the only way we can do that is by helping our brothers and sisters look deeper at things before we make it available to others, especially our children, since they are the next generation. If everyone would do that starting today, one day we would be free.
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